Projections and perceptions are like photoshops. One can create a cat as big as elephant and reduce elephant to the size of a cat. Real cat and elephant won´t eat and can´t eat food as per their photoshopped size.

Try to understand your own position, you have not seen the last phase of Osho´s work in real terms, therefore there is no emotional investment. For me, everything is in memory in its multi-dimensional form.

You will be surprised to know there are hardly 30,50 participant visitors in Pune. Someone just told me few hours ago on the videochat. To hear of such a small number, my respect for human intelligence increased even more. People have become smarter to see under the superficial coat of modernity.

The lifelong servant of Sannyas, Dhanyam, of Viha Connection, is, I think, still banned from the Resort and has been for some years. But he continues to serve Osho and act as a conduit for his work, and a very laudable one.

I am totally unconcerned as to whether if I wanted to pass through the Gateless Gate ever again I would get through!

I doubt it myself as I am a smaller version of a Dhanyam.
Whether the Aruns and Keertis and Shantams will ever get this I doubt.

But Osho is everywhere, and I am happy to embrace him wherever. And happy to embrace the full range of disciples everywhere who do not want to ‘rule’!

On October 11, 2017, the European Court of Justice pronounced its verdict in the ‘Osho’ trademark case.

Our appeal requesting the cancellation of the trademark was dismissed, and the EUCJ has thus confirmed the validity of the trademark as a brand.

The subject of the relationship between Osho and meditation was debated in a hearing before the court in Luxembourg on December 13, 2016. At this hearing, the lawyer of Osho International Foundation stated: “Osho has nothing to do with meditation – it is a brand.” The court has now decided in favour of this interpretation.

In my view, it is a fateful irony that the name of the man who spent all his life speaking about meditation, and for whom meditation was the focus of his entire life and work, has now been established as the brand name of a business organisation in Europe.

Let us review the facts:
For the first eight years after Osho’s death in 1990 the use of the name Osho was not restricted in any way. The posthumous annexation and monopolisation of the name Osho began in around 1998 with its registration as a trademark for Osho International Foundation in Zurich. This was done behind the back of the community of Osho’s followers, clearly in an attempt to forestall possible (justified) objections to the registration.

The retrospective allegation that Osho himself wanted his name to be a trademark and that he actually ordered its registration is simply untrue. It is an attempt to mislead, and to legitimise OIF’s own objectives and plans.

In a press notice released on October 17, OIF writes that they are delighted that they are now able to preserve Osho’s message in its purest form, “like 24-karat gold”. This creates the impression that Osho himself personally entrusted OIF with this ‘task’. In reality, the request to disseminate and preserve his message ‘24-carat gold’ was made in a public lecture delivered by Osho in 1986, and it was addressed to all his disciples and friends! (Sermons in Stones, lecture 12, question 4). Here too, in my opinion, OIF is indirectly appointing itself as the guardian of Osho’s message and attempting to distract attention from its own real interests.

In the USA, Osho’s sannyasins resisted the monopolisation of his name, and after a trial lasting seven years the name Osho was cancelled as a trademark in the USA. The decisive point there was that Osho was seen as a spiritual teacher, and the use of the name Osho as a trademark was thus not allowed because it would have constituted a restriction of the free practice of religion.

The appeal against the use of the name ‘Osho’ as a trademark in Europe began in 2009, with the objective of enabling free use of the name Osho in Europe in the same way as in America. The European Patent Office ultimately dismissed the request to cancel the Osho trademark on the grounds that although Osho was a spiritual teacher, the content of his teachings was not concrete enough for his name to be able to stand for a clearly defined message.

During the litigation the OIF lawyer submitted an affidavit together with a will that Osho had allegedly made and signed around three months before his death. To the astonishment of everyone involved, this will proved to be a forgery. At the time the will was not legally relevant for the decision of the appeal, since the only question in dispute was whether Osho’s name had been rightfully registered as a trademark. However, submission of the forged will does show that OIF is prepared to use any means to establish itself as the heir apparent to Osho’s intellectual property – including the trademark, the copyright and his works of art.

One must ask whether such behaviour can be regarded as a proper qualification for preserving Osho’s message in its purest form, “like 24-carat gold”. This is at the very least a highly creative interpretation of the facts. I personally believe that money, power and control are more likely to be the real motives here.

And so now the European Court of Justice has confirmed the ruling of the European Patent Office. This is a decision that I believe to be wrong, because it completely ignores the question of free practice of religion and focuses only on the business aspects of the Osho trademark. To me ‘Osho’ has nothing to do with a brand but with Meditation. That was and still is the very centre of his life and teaching.

At no point in his life, until the day of his death, did Osho ever ask anyone to sign contracts or agreements of any kind. It is also an uncontested fact that Osho repeatedly and clearly stated that the Osho meditation centres should always remain free and independent of any other organisations. And it also remains a fact that nobody who does not want can be forced to sign a contract.

On the other hand, the registration of the trademark does not mean that one can no longer use the name Osho to refer to the historical person. This, in turn, means that there is a difference between OSHO and Osho, and living with both at the same time is certainly going to require a great deal of intelligence, creativity.

Cologne, October 21, 2017

https://www.facebook.com/ramateertha/posts/10155789608774346

Careful…

A friend of mine was banned from the Resort for posting on FB exactly what you are posting now. I’m serious, it really happened.

The courageous lions sannyasins are afraid of getting banned, so they don’t say a peep.

You are treading on thin ice.

I wrote to SPTN* and pitched it to Facebook as part of their short-lived open Platform…and Bill Trenchard visited me in Queenstown, New Zealand while simultaneously seed-funding Uber.

Facebook owes everything to mobile. Zuckerberg is not a visionary. Just another predatory business model.

The question I have is: where is a photo of Steve Jobs at Pune 1?

*SPTN was the world’s first mobile ride-sharing app that I am aware of, designed while I was still in flight school. I got it resurrected as skyuber.com shortly after my first visit to India.

If a campus of 24 acres whose market worth is around a billion dollars cannot be managed with the co-operation of lifelong native disciples and lifelong western disciples spread around the world then it simply means meditation medicine was used as a mouth-freshener before or after sex!

This is a simple fact, and wonder is those who have never been to Pune blame me for my “ideas”.

This blog is a micro-sannyas-test-tube and, sorry to say, blessed may not be, but intelligent and humane are those who have nothing to do with 20th century semi-spiritual literature.

This irony I can write again and again, there is Sheela influence, no Trump or Modi influence, in the downfall of Neo-Sannyas collective at its headquarters.

P.S:
Yogesh Thakkar (Sw. Premgeet) is a front face, whereas the string and sterling are with silent majority.

MOD:
POST EDITED.